Led by Yolande Harris
www.yolandeharris.net
Workshop Size: Maximum 15

How can our conscious listening affect the world around us?
Sound activates relationships between humans, animals and our shared environments; and it is these relationships that we aim to reactivate and renew. This workshop uses deep listening, ear cleaning, field recordings and sound technology to explore remote places of the environment and the mind. Participants will work with developing ‘sonic consciousness’, a deepening of awareness through an attentiveness to sound, and ‘techno-intuition’, combining technological and intuitive ways of knowing and being in the world. Oceanic sound will be our portal to gain greater empathy and care for our environment.

Why listen to the ocean in the desert? By combining these radically contrasting environments, we become intimately and viscerally connected to these diverse ecologies, heightening our awareness of the relationships between them and stimulating a sense of remote presence and empathy. The workshop will include sound walks, group listening experiences, and live and recorded sounds from the oceans, including whales, dolphins, narwhals, seals.

Participants are expected to bring a collaborative open mind and be able to engage in group activities and discussions. No background in sound or listening is required and experts and novice listeners are equally welcome.

Yolande Harris is an artist and scholar exploring ideas of sonic consciousness and techno-intuition. Her projects consider expanding perception beyond the range of human senses, the technological mediation of underwater environments and our relationship to other species. She has presented her work internationally over the last twenty years, including the ICA London, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and the House of World Cultures Berlin, and holds a PhD from Leiden University in ‘Sound, Environment and Sonic Consciousness’. Yolande was Assistant Professor in Film/Animation/Video at Rhode Island School of Design, before moving to California where she is Affiliate Faculty with the Digital Arts and New Media MFA program and Lecturer in the Art Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz.